Travis Charbeneau

"Something's going on here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?"

and

Daltry's "Yeahhhh!" from "Won't Get Fooled Again."

Band activity dropped off by 2007, and I'm back to doing a lot of composing and recording at home. I've done some online collaborations with ex-band members and old friends, just passing MP3s back and forth. But I got my first check recently and would love to become an armchair studio musician filling lap steel-shaped holes around the world.

As noted above, I started playing guitar in 1962 at 17 (the folkie boom!) and have worked in music ever since. Early experience included garage bands of every description and several road bands working out of Miami, up the Florida Coast, into Atlanta, New York, Detroit and points in between. I wrote, sang, and played lead guitar in groups, and did a good deal of solo and duo work when the bands were off.

I began freelancing in 1973 as an engineer and commercial producer at a number of Miami recording studios, among them Linale Sound, Visual Productions, Tel-Air Interests and Criteria.

Also noted, in 1980 I contracted severe arthritis which put an end to my guitar playing. I now have surgical fusions in all fingers. However, computers, synths and MIDI came to the rescue in 1986. My now way-old but still-serviceable home MIDI studio runs off a PC with good old Sequencer Plus Gold and Digital Orchestrator Pro software from Voyetra (I was a beta tester for these programs), as well as sound generating and digital processing gear from Roland, Yamaha, E-mu, ART, the usual suspects. Originally, I did all instrumentals, sequenced "live" and recorded direct to tape.

This MIDI work is characterized by short "songs" in eclectic genres: ballads, space rock, jazz, blues, classical, Latin. I eventually developed a specialty in hard rock instrumentals, showcased in the two "MetalSynth" collections.

In 2000 I finished a compilation CD, "Pieces of Mind," featuring 22 tracks from seven albums produced between 1986-93. Combined, these run the gamut, with the rockers featuring my own synth programming and guitar simulation sequencing techniques.

In addition to receiving some airplay on Richmond's WCVE-FM (NPR), myJeff Beck-ish "Fanfare for the Common Putz" climaxed "Future Radio," a nationally- syndicated radio hour of indie music. Additionally, Voyetra Technologies featured two "MetalSynth" cuts, plus my writing, production and narration on an audio cassette demo of their music software.

In 1993, I acquired the lap steel guitar my grandfather had originally made in 1957 from a piece of Hawaiian "Monkey Pod" wood, and I taught myself this "look ma, no hands" instrument. My more recent work integrates digitally-recorded lap steel over sequenced midi drum/bass. In 2004 I worked up some compositions for my "Man of Steel" CD, with a variety of those cuts, like the "Pieces of Mind" works, posted at my web site as MP3s. (I am literally made of steel at the left shoulder, right wrist, both hips and both knees. There's some titanium in there, too -- but "Man of Titanium" just doesn't make it.)

In Richmond, VA, Beginning in 2001, I played lap steel with The Shiners for two years, appearing on both their CDs "Bonnie Blue" and "See Rock City"; gigging as far afield as DC's Iota and Manhattan's Rodeo Bar. I was with singer-songwriter Ben Jordan as a duo in 2004-05 and "Ben Jordan & the Heathens," the 2006 band playing mostly Ben's material. I've also played with Richmond favorites Moossa, The Atkinsons, and the Michael James' band Big Cat Bark. In '07 and '08 I put together a couple of music videos for YouTube postings, with links at my page.

My music journalism outings include articles for Keyboard Magazine, Music Technology (US and UK), World Monitor, Option, Copley News Service, and The Futurist, The Journal of the World Future Society. In July of 1989 I gave a presentation to the Sixth General Assembly of the Society in Washington, DC: "Towards a New Folk Music; the Computer Revolution in Music."

Several lap steels: the ubiquitous Gibson BR-9, a 1936 Dobro 1 all-aluminum lap, and the "Watson family lap," plus a Beard Goldtone squareneck resonator guitar. I have some amps, synth rack, keyboards, mics, various wires, etc.